‘Applauding Nollywood doesn’t mean respecting it’
What were you doing before you came to Nigeria? I was working as a producer, a meditative educator, as a director and was not yet into feature films. I was more into short films and documentaries. I was also organising festivals and involved in different forms of education. Basically, I was a media, film and […]
What were you doing before you came to Nigeria?
I was working as a producer, a meditative educator, as a director and was not yet into feature films. I was more into short films and documentaries. I was also organising festivals and involved in different forms of education. Basically, I was a media, film and television person.
How would you compare the work terrain abroad to that of Nigeria?
The film industry in Nigeria is just growing and we are still babies in it. We still have a long way to go. What is interesting now is that we have a new generation of Nollywood filmmakers, who want to make a change and are saying ‘we need education, and want to improve our technique one stage higher’. This is great but the thing is we really cannot compare ourselves as far as growth is concerned with anywhere else in the world.
Like everybody else, we are very determined to tell our own story. We just at this point need to refine how we tell the story. Two key things are lacking in Nigeria’s filmmaking or story telling culture – development, especially development of stories and scripts. The second one is distribution and how films are distributed or even how television is distributed. This is the only place I know where you have to pay to have your programme aired. It is a different kind of economy and I sometimes feel it will come back and bite us if we do not start putting things in the right perspective.
You have been involved in some projects using film as a corrective tool. Could you tell us about them?
My main stay in the U.K. was working with children. I loved this a lot more than working in television or in a BBC setting because you could see how the young person’s life is affected and changed them and community for the better. After doing ‘Wetin Dey’ which is very similar in that it is a behaviour change and communication method. I realised that where my heart was, was with making progrmammes that really changed people’s lives especially drama programmes. The power to hook a person to a character’s journey, take them through their dilemma and have the audience identify and start thinking about choices they make is a very powerful tool. I decided that I was going to stick with that.
I found that one of the biggest problems we have here is corruption which cuts across every sector and level and that it is affecting young people many of whom are very innocent. But of course, when a system is corrupt it ends up corrupting them as well. I believe corruption truly has to be dealt with. It is the one thing about Nigeria that sticks out like a sore thumb and it is wrong because we have a lot more going for us than that. And it is wrong for Nigerians, to be seen as corrupt all over the world especially when you have young people who have done nothing to inherit such a name.
We know that poverty and all sorts of elements in the environment cause corruption, so we got a group of young people who went through a learning process of writing stories, making the story, filming it and getting that story out to the general public. We decided to use this method to change young people’s lives. Before such a child goes on to indulge in cyber crime, he will think twice because he doesn’t not want his story to end in the tragic way a film character’s ended.
They will start believing in themselves and making choices based on the character choices to be better citizens and human beings. In August last year, the Film and Video Censors Board sponsored us to run a training course for about twenty young people in Abuja to teach them how to write scripts with anti-corruption messages embedded in them.
The first thing we thought them was to learn the importance of research because in order to do stories to change people’s lives you have to research and get people’s life stories so that when audience watches it, they can relate, understand and see a real person in that character.
When we started, anti-corruption was our focus not cyber crime. I said to these young people, ‘go out and see what corruption means to Nigerians.’ If I say corruption, what comes back to you? Two things that came back were politicians and cyber crime. The politician angle doesn’t affect them because they are not yet politicians but cyber crime does and was very high on everybody’s list. So I said to them, if cyber crime is so high on your list then it is something you should be tackling.
After two weeks of writing and thinking about human beings and characters they came up with the story, ‘12.30’. The reason they called it 12.30 is because at that time many phone networks offer free airtime for phone and internet use and that is when most of the yahoo, yahoo, guys are doing their deals then because it is all free and they are trying to make their profits too. It also means doing dodgy things at night. In the film, 12.30 is also a code name that the EFCC uses to identify this group of people.
How do you source your characters?
Again it was up to the children. They worked with a wonderful writer, Tyrone Terrence. As part of the research process, he took them out to Silverbird and asked them to go and talk to someone they had never met in their life and to come back and write something about that person they had met. They went through the process of thinking about real human beings. They got so much information about different people which helped in developing the outline for the story. They could pull knowledge off people’s faces, their way of speaking, dressing and body language. It wasn’t just a plastic front with no depths. Rather than the flat Woman A went and did this, they had lines like, ‘Woman A with a scarf on her head wearing lipstick who speaks like this does this.’ When you create a character on paper you have somehow given them a history. What did they do that morning, what did they have for breakfast? And so on. A lot of these things are what form us and our thinking as human beings. These are subtle things that we do not know may form our behaviour pattern. It was important that the young people went out and did their research and found real people to write about for the story.
‘Wetin Dey’ was widely watched. Do you think it achieved its set target?
Yes I think it did in a sense. Many of people, I believe, learned from it. Some have stopped me in all sorts of places across Nigeria and have sparked debates based on what they saw on ‘Wetin Dey’. Where I realise that they have learnt something about HIV, its prevention and awareness is when they say things like ‘what that person did was wrong’ or ‘how ignorant’, ‘don’t they know them no dey catch AIDS by touch?’ When people start talking like that you know they got something from watching ‘Wetin Dey’.
If we can get the same kind of result from 12.30 I will be very, very happy because I want people to say ‘I beg cyber crime no dey pay o’. If people can start reacting to the film, especially young people, that will be a great plus. We are looking at the new Nigeria made up of young people. We are all talking about anti-corruption but I haven’t yet heard one agency or body that has said how important media is in changing the perception of young people towards corruption or stopping it.
Fighting corruption is no longer lip-service because if we are serious about fighting it, we have to use the strongest media that they know; which is the screen to change their lives. It could be the TV screen, the cinema screen, phone screen or computer screen. We have to be creative because if we are not, we will not be able to engage them. And what will happen in 20 years time is, these kids are going to think that corruption is the acceptable norm in Nigeria.
A child has every right to tell his parents ‘what you are doing is corrupt’. Or ‘Mummy don’t throw that rubbish on the floor, it is not good for the environment.’ Will you stop your child from telling you the truth? Why are we not doing things like this? Why are we spending money chasing people who will never change their behaviour?
Why don’t we spend this money towards young people and get them to start telling their stories about what they want Nigeria to start doing.
As a mother, how are you able to draw the line between cautioning your children professionally as a filmmaker and cautioning them as a mother especially as they are within the age range you are targeting?
It is not easy. Any woman in this industry knows how difficult it is to joggle family life and career. Not many women who are in CEO and MD position in film and entertainment companies do it effectively. But I feel completely blest with my children because they have been doing this with me for such a long time.
Film industry does not pay bills. Anyone who wants to get into the industry has to have a passion for story telling and telling the truth. Unfortunately this doesn’t pay; and it should because it is a very noble career.
Being a parent, it is not an easy task. But I try to take my children with me everywhere I go. Thank God none of them wants to be a filmmaker. So when I start my ‘lectures’ on filmmaking they remind me, ‘Mum, you know we don’t want to be filmmakers. So let’s not go there.’ They have both got their individual voices but it has not been easy.
Have you seen or experienced any gender bias here?
Oh yes. I see it loud and clear. There is a gender bias. It is everywhere, not only in Nigeria. There are many young women I have taught who have been stuck with it. First of all as a woman in this industry, it is a very lonely career. One has to make a lot of sacrifices to stay in this industry. You have to be very strong-willed, focused and determined to stay in and survive.
You will get knocked on all sides and especially from the men. But I will admit this, in all my encounters; I have suffered the most sexism in the Nigerian industry. Not that there isn’t sexism anywhere else but it has never affected me as a person as much as it has in Nigeria. I see that in Nigeria there is still the perception that women have a place and should stay quiet, there. As a producer with a team of 30, 40 people, how quiet can you be when half the people are asleep and you want to get a fantastic international job done. Saying this will get me into trouble but for people who know me know, I will always speak the truth until I get perfection.
If we all try to see perfection can you imagine how we will move as an army because we all believe in the same kind of thing and the difference we will make? I want to instill this culture in the people I meet and those I work with.
In Nigeria, there is more focus on quantity and not quality…
If the world celebrates us because of the amount of films we produce, why shouldn’t they? Maybe because I am coming from abroad into Nigeria, what we forget as the Cubans rightly say, is ‘applaud does not mean respect.’ We shouldn’t get lost in the amount of films we make and forget about making quality films that will stand the test of time.
Sometimes we try to be sophisticated but are rather simple. We make a hundred films, oh, wow! But how many of them actually have an impact on the audience?
We should stop thinking quantity but substance in everything we do, not just films. If we focuse on this, there will come a time when films with no substance will be way down on the ladder or the maker will have to improve on talents.
What does it mean for Nollywood to be second largest nation for film in the world? The people who said that should put their money where their mouth is and help us make it not just the second in quantity but because our stories are to die for.